Marriage

Another type of marriage gift is the lobola found among the patrilineal and patrilocal communities of the S.E. Bantu, who live by combined agriculture and cattle-raising. The wife and children are here regarded as a definite economic and sociological asset. The wife is the main agricultural and domestic worker, while the children are valuable because the boys continue the line and the girls bring in wealth at marriage. Marriage is concluded by the payment of cattle, the amount varying greatly according to tribe, rank and other considerations from a couple of head to a few score. These cattle are known as lobola, or "bride-price," as is the current but incorrect anthropological expression. The lobola in fact is not the motive for the transaction, nor is there any bidding on any market, nor can the cattle be disposed of at will by the receiver, i.e., the girl's father. Some of them have to be distributed by him according to fixed tribal custom among particular relatives of the girl; the rest he has to use for the provision of a wife for his son, i.e., the girl's brother, or else, if he has no male heir, he contracts another wife for himself, in order to obtain the desired male descendants. In case of divorce the marriage gift has to be returned as the identical cattle given and not merely in an equivalent form. The lobola is thus rather a symbolic equivalent representing the wife's economic efficiency, and it has to be treated as a deposit to be spent on another marriage.

In Melanesia the husband's initial gift at marriage is a ritual act, and is always reciprocated by the wife's family. This is the case also among certain American tribes (Tshimshian, Coast Salish, Bellacoola, Delaware, Ojibway, Navaho, Miwok) ; in Siberia (Mordwin, Ainu, Buryat, Samoyed, Koryak), and in Polynesia (Samoa). This return gift may take the form of a dowry given to the bride by her father or parents or other rela tives but also directly or indirectly benefiting her husband (Green landers, Brazilian aborigines, Yahgans of America; Ibo, Ovambo, S.E. Bantu, Banyoro, Masai of Africa; Buryat, Yukaghir, Sa moyed of Siberia; Toda of India; Banks Islanders, Buin, Maori of Oceania). In some communities the balance of gifts is so much in favour of the husband that instead of wife purchase we could speak of buying a husband for the girl (N. Massim; coast tribes of Br. Columbia; Tehuelches of Patagonia; Yakut). Both con cepts, however, that of "wife purchase" and "husband purchase" are obviously inadmissible.

12. Property and Inheritance Within Marriage.

As a rule, whatever the manner of economic inauguration of marriage, and whatever the mutual services exchanged between the part ners, the latter have not only their own sphere of activity but their own possessions. The wife usually claims the title and right of disposing of her articles of apparel, of the domestic utensils and often of the special implements and fruits of her pursuit. The importance of woman's work in agriculture, her social influ ence due to this and her specific claims to the agricultural produce —not the ownership of the land, which is generally vested in man—have given rise to the economic theory of mother-right (see below, 13 and Very often the possessions of the husband and wife are in herited by their respective kindred, and not by the surviving partner. The inheritance of the wife by the husband's brother (the custom of levirate q.v.), which is known from the Old Testa

ment, but has a fairly wide range of distribution (see the exten sive lists given by Westermarck, loc. cit. vol. iii., pp. 208-210; Briffault, The Mothers, vol. i., pp. 767-772) is not to be regarded as an economic transaction. Like the inheritance of a widow under mother-right and like the custom of killing the widows and the suttee of India, it is the expression of the matrimonial bonds out lasting death, and defining the widow's behaviour afterwards (see below, 2o).

13. Marriage as a Legal Contract.

Marriage is never a mere cohabitation, and in no society are two people of different sex allowed to share life in common and produce children without having the approval of the community. This is obtained by going through the legal and ritual formalities which constitute the act of marriage, by accepting in this the obligations which are entailed in marriage and the privileges which it gives, and by having later on to submit to the consequences of the union as regards children.

The legal side of marriage is therefore not made up of special activities, such as constitute its sexual, economic, domestic or parental aspect. It is rather that special side in each of these aspects, which makes them defined by tradition, formally entered upon, and made binding by special sanctions.

First of all, the whole system of obligations and rights which constitute marriage is in each society laid down by tradition. The way in which people have to cohabit and work together is stipulated by tribal law : whether the man joins his wife or vice versa ; whether and how they live together, completely or partially ; whether the sexual appropriation is complete, making adultery in either partner an offence, or whether, subject to certain restric tions, there may be waiving of the sexual rights; whether there is economic co-operation and what are its limits. The details and the typical rules and variations of all this have already been dis cussed, as well as, incidentally, the ways in which the rules are enforced. But it must be added that in no other subject of an thropology is our knowledge so limited as in the dynamic problems of why rules are kept, how they are enforced, and how they are evaded or partially broken. (Cf. B. Malinowski, Crime and Cus tom in Savage Society, 1926.) Only on one or two points are we habitually informed by ethnographic observers, as to what penalties attach to a breach of law and custom and what premiums are set on their careful and generous observance. Thus, we are often informed how adul tery is dealt with, though we usually get exaggerated accounts of the severity of the law on this point. Again, to anticipate, incest and exogamy are usually surrounded with definite sanctions, some social and some supernatural. The manners and morals of daily contact within the household are usually laid down and enforced by that complicated and imponderable set of forces which governs all human behaviour in its everyday aspects and makes people distinguish between "good" and "bad form" in every hu man society. The validity of the economic duties of husband and wife are as a rule based on the fact that the services of the one are conditional on the services of the other, and that a very lazy or unscrupulous partner would eventually be divorced by the other.